Title

Authors

Date of this Version

1999

Document Type

Article

Citation

Published in Journal of Rapid Methods and Automation in Microbiology (1999) 7: 25-38.

Abstract

The rapid identification and quantification of pathogenic foodborne bacteria is a national research priority. Data collected with a new spectrochemical method suggests that resonance Raman spectroscopy can rapidly and selectively identify and quantify bacteria in foods and other complex biomatrices. This method utilizes hydrogen-deuterium exchange (HDE) to resolve the spectral fingerprints of individual components in the overlapped regions of the ultraviolet resonance Raman spectra of heterogeneous samples. We illustrate this concept with HDE-induced changes in the spectra of bacteria and beef carcass wash samples. The data presented here suggest that the combination of ultraviolet resonance Raman spectroscopy and HDE can potentially establish the identities and quantities of bacteria in heterogeneous samples within seconds to minutes.